It’s their uniqueness that makes all the difference (I know it’s strange to call these invariably derivative movies “unique,” but bear with me here). Great films take risks, and average films treat risks the same way you or I would treat rabid weasels, but bad films, the truly awful ones, are capable of entering extremely insane territory at the blink of an eye. These movies have nothing to lose and they’ll do anything for a little bit of attention, like that one girl in college. You’re far less likely to be bored watching one of these than Under the Tuscan Sun, anyway.

Don't ask me why I remember this movie.

And though this probably means that there’s something wrong with me, I also love the experience of ingesting a story written by a true idiot. Most people being of average intelligence, these are harder to find than you might think, so it’s kind of a treat to run across one. As a fantasy writer, I find it oddly inspiring to listen to dialog that sounds as though it was written by a ten-year-old Dungeon Master. It serves to remind us all of what we’re capable of.

*actual villainous line

So, yes, I want to make a case for watching horrid garbage. I don’t count it as a waste of time, because it’s honestly ten times more entertaining than watching something that garnered warm reviews, but will be forgotten in five years. I’m going to continue to dredge the depths of Netflix in search of movies that by all rights shouldn’t exist, and probably make comics about them. All who wish to join me in my depravity are welcome.

I’ve since discovered that fantasy storytelling is similar to heavy metal music, in that it’s split into way too many diverse groups and most of them are so specific as to be unnecessary. I thought about making a Venn diagram, but that proved to be impossible, especially since all these genres freely mix and match with each other. But what kind of nerd would I be if I didn’t make my best attempt to sort it all out?

So follows my glossary of fantasy subgenres and associate genres, after hours of research. I’ve tried to give some indication of how much each relies on magical elements, but as with practically everything I’m presenting here, nothing is a hard and fast rule.

Alternate History

Features a sort of “what if” scenario regarding real-world history, in which the writer changes certain events and then speculates on the outcome. Strictly speaking, there’s no magic involved, making this subgenre more likely to overlap with sci-fi than fantasy. Of course, some people mix them anyway, and we end up with a sort of low-magic Historical Fantasy piece.

Magic Level: Nonexistent to Low

Bangsian Fantasy

When it comes to official fantasy subgenres, you don’t get more specific than this one. In Bangsian Fantasy, dead famous people (fictional or real-life) all get together and have delightful conversations and/or adventures, whether it be in the afterlife, as ghosts, or having been reanimated somehow. One of them is almost always Sherlock Holmes.

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Children’s Fantasy

Right there in the name. This one is special because many of genre fiction’s earliest works fall into this category, as the authors felt that this was the only way they could get away with it. Times have changed, but saying “It’s for the kiddies!” is still a far more acceptable and widespread way to write about fantasy elements. I would say it’s a shame, but I don’t begrudge the existence of all the wonderful fantasy stories for children out there.

Magic Level: High

Comic Fantasy

Fantasy that’s humorous in some way, whether it’s making fun of itself, other works of fantasy, society in general, or all of the above. Obviously, this can really be any kind of fantasy at all, as long as it makes you laugh (excluding movies like She, where you’re laughing for the wrong reasons).

Magic Level: Any

Contemporary/Modern/Urban Fantasy

Set in a version of the modern world that is pervaded with fantasy elements, rather than an alternate universe. “Urban Fantasy” is a popular term for such stories set specifically inside a city. “Mythic Fiction” is similar, but all fantastical elements must reflect mythological or folkloric sources. Can be either High or Low fantasy (see below).

Magic Level: Any

Dark/Gothic/Horror Fantasy

This one is fairly self-explanatory, simply representing a mixing of the fantasy and horror genres. Often includes infernal representations like demons or somesuch, or unspeakable supernatural beings like Cthulhu.

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Dying Earth Fantasy

Another super-specific subgenre, named after the seminal work by Jack Vance, which was later expanded on by numerous authors. The term has come to encompass any fantasy or science fiction story taking place just before the end of the human world.

Magic Level: Any

Elfpunk/Mythpunk/Etherpunk

Yes, biker elves, folkloric beat poets, and computer scientist wizards do get their own subgenres. This is all just a smattering of really, really specific areas of Urban Fantasy (see Contemporary, above). Use these terms in conversation only if it’s really important to you that nobody understand what you’re talking about.

Magic Level: Medium

Fairy Tale Fantasy

Basically, people writing their own fairy tales. Fairy tales themselves aren’t considered “fantasy” in the literary sense, although officially they encapsulate several stories written by known authors rather than derived from folklore (Hans Christian Andersen, anyone?). I think that this distinction is flawed; to my mind, “fairy tale” should refer only to collectively created folk tales, and “fairy tale fantasy” to works by single authors that show a strong fairy tale influence.

Magic Level: Medium to High

Fantastique

A mostly French genre that’s sort of like Magical Realism in that it portrays supernatural effects as simply existing in the modern world, but unlike it in that the characters themselves are rather disturbed by all this strangeness. Kind of a good stepping stone between Magical Realism and “classic” fantasy.

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Fantasy of Manners

A twisting of the term “comedy of manners,” meaning that it’s a fantasy in which everyone wittily snipes at each other like they’re in a Jane Austen novel. So closely related to Romantic Fantasy and Historical Fantasy that it’s sort of pointless to separate it from them, except for the fact that it’s sure not to be as serious.

Magic Level: Low

Gaslamp Fantasy

Fantasy that takes place specifically in a Victorian or Gothic universe. Differs from Steampunk, a sci-fi genre, in that it de-emphasizes technology a bit and will often have more supernatural goings-on. But most people will probably still think of them as the same thing.

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Hard Fantasy

Named after “hard” science fiction, in which no fanciful deviations from the realm of plausibility are allowed. It’s harder for pure fantasy to pull this off, so it probably has sci-fi elements intertwined. Notably, typing the name of this genre into a Google image search does not turn up the types of pictures you want to see.

Magic Level: Nonexistent to Low

Heroic Fantasy

An ill-defined genre, it’s an awful lot like Sword and Sorcery (in fact, it’s pretty much just the same genre in disguise so that it won’t have to own up to that Red Sonja movie). Perhaps it has a little more emphasis on good vs. evil and saving the world, but isn’t that what High Fantasy is for?

Magic Level: High

High/Epic Fantasy

What most people are thinking of when they hear the word “fantasy.” Describes an intricate alternate universe of some sort, usually separate from our own, always with internally consistent rules. Legendary heroes, prophecies, and Campbellian themes abound. The fate of the world is frequently at stake. One of the two “umbrella” fantasy genres, along with Low Fantasy.

Magic Level: High to Staggering

Historical Fantasy

Almost always set in a pre-industrial time in real-world history, although also applicable to a made-up world that simply takes all of its cues from a specific historical period or culture of Earth. Usually has pretty strong magical elements.

Magic Level: Medium to High

Lost World

This genre can be fantasy, science fiction, or both. It revolves around the discovery of a long-lost continent or civilization (such as the city of Atlantis) by “modern” explorers. Lost World stories often have a vintage feel to them, as their golden age was between the late 19th and early 20th centuries and modern writers in this genre still like to evoke the mood of those decades.

Magic Level: Low

Low Fantasy

The other “umbrella” genre (opposite High Fantasy), it has more of a tendency to blur the lines between the real world and the fantasy world. Favors fictionalized versions of our reality (historical or present) rather than entirely made-up universes, although this isn’t always the case. Instead of the salvation of humanity, the story focuses on the hero’s personal struggles. Somewhat more likely to be gritty and dark than romantic or whimsical, yet by other definitions it is said to take itself far less seriously.

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Magical Realism

Commonly referring to works made in Spanish, this describes a genre wherein there are fantastical elements that people in a real-life setting calmly accept without question. It might be controversial including this here, as people can’t seem to decide whether this is actually “fantasy” or not (here are some opinions). I personally can’t see any reason why this isn’t widely considered to be a fantasy genre, other than the fact that we still need to feel comfortable assigning these books as required reading in schools.

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Medieval Fantasy

Ale and wenches, kings and castles, dragons and knights, ho! Usually considered a subgenre of High Fantasy, this is by far the most common type of fantasy setting that exists. It basically includes anything with strong resemblances to what its creators must have thought medieval Europe looked like. Really fun, but it can sometimes get old after a while.

Magic Level: High

Mythology/Folk/Fairy Tales

Everyone knows what these are, and they’ve served to inspire many (if not all) works of fantasy fiction over the centuries. However, I believe they should not be considered “fantasy” as such, since these stories are not really works of fiction so much as cultural constructs. They are created collectively and evolve over time, more like a language than a genre.

Magic Level: Staggering

Paranormal Romance

A more catch-all term for Romantic Fantasy (see below) that can also encompass sci-fi and horror. Probably more likely to be used in the context of Urban Fantasy rather than a fantasy that takes place in the past or in another world.

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Romantic Fantasy

Exactly what it sounds like. If you want to get even more specific over what’s already a pretty specific genre, Wikipedia’s got you covered: “Some publishers distinguish between ‘romantic fantasy’ where the romance is most important and ‘fantasy romance’ where the fantasy elements are most important.” Okay, whatever.

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Science Fantasy

The Wikipedia article on this one really sort of doubles as a thought-provoking essay about what constitutes fantasy vs. sci-fi elements all on its own, so be sure to check it out for further elaboration. In short, I think that “Science Fantasy” can be used as a catch-all term for works that subjectively seem as though they can’t be exclusive to either genre, such as the notable example of Star Wars.

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Superhero/Martial Arts Fantasy

I understand that superhero stories and martial arts stories are very distinct from one another, but their relationship to the overall genre of “fantasy” is the same, so I’ve lumped them together here. Basically, whether or not they are technically fantasy genres is something people can’t seem to decide on. The point may be moot anyway, as both these genres are so large that they cultivate their own followings and have huge sets of tropes and conventions that are unique to them. Hence, they should usually be considered on their own terms.

Magic Level: Any

Sword and Sorcery

Wikipedia describes this genre as “swashbuckling,” yet we all know that the primary example of it is Conan the Barbarian. I suppose the literary Conan is somewhat swashbuckling (although his image isn’t what immediately pops into my mind whenever I hear that term), but the cinematic Conan is hardly a glib, roguish hero. This genre is oriented around action and adventure, focused on the personal struggles of a single character who is probably an anti-hero. Looked down on nowadays due to lots of derivative elements and Conan copycats, but still one of my favorites because of its overall grittiness and lack of elves. Sometimes called “Sword and Sandal” if it has a Greco-Roman flavor to it.

Magic Level: High

Supernatural Fiction

Apparently, stories containing supernatural creatures usually count as “fantasy,” unless, of course, they are about ghosts. I mean, that would just be silly!

Magic Level: Low to Medium

Surrealism

Oh boy, here we go. Trying to decide if Surrealism counts as “fantasy” or not is like trying to get a mammoth to have sex with a blue whale–they’re both way too large and nobody can figure out how they’re supposed to fit together. Ultimately, this is something that everyone has to decide for themselves, because there will never be an answer.

Magic Level: What’s Magic? What’s Reality? I forgot who I am!

Weird/New Weird Fiction

Unique in that it applies to works created before the many types of speculative fiction fell into place (or in the case of New Weird, it mimics the aforementioned stories in style). Doesn’t care one whit about the various genre distinctions, mixing them freely. Its motto: anything goes.

Magic Level: Any

What If/Plot Convenience Fantasy

When a story (usually a movie) seems set entirely in the real world except for a single magical occurrence, which almost always goes unexplained and is mostly there to put the characters in a strange situation. Primary examples would be Liar, Liar and Freaky Friday, but the best by far is Groundhog Day. “So put your little hand in mine…”

Magic Level: Extremely Low

And there you go. I tried to be as comprehensive as I could, though it wouldn’t surprise me if I left out a genre or two dedicated solely to surfing unicorns or something like that. Hopefully, this glossary will save others as much time as I used up making it.

Drawn from a photo, as usual, although the model was wearing a white bikini and I gave her a loincloth instead, because everybody looks better in loincloths. I also changed the position of her arms slightly, and her face is a bit different. I’m not entirely satisfied with the latter, but it works.

Favorite thing: I love the pose. I don’t like to draw people who are placed in overtly sexy or attention-getting positions. I prefer them to look as though they were caught candidly, in the middle of doing something or about to do something. They wind up looking far sexier than models pouting at the camera.

Least favorite thing: Her face isn’t quite right. At least I’m still getting better with faces (Crouching Woman has a better face than Staff Chick).

Recently, I’ve been putting a lot of things in perspective, attempting to improve my life. An odd side effect of this was that the urge to draw something suddenly resurfaced, completely against my expectations. I hadn’t really thought about drawing in years, yet there it was.

I’m taking my newfound creativity as a good sign. I’m going to work on actively bludgeoning back my inner critic, who up to this point has had way too much control over my adult life. Sure, my drawings aren’t perfect, but they’re good enough, and the more I do them, the more I’ll improve. For once, the positivity I feel while creating outweighs the feelings of self-judgement I’ve gotten used to imposing on myself.

Also, things I’d forgotten:

–How good it feels when you get that one line inexplicably perfect, and how frustrated you get when you can’t achieve the same effect in mirror image on the other side of the body.
–How you’ll work for 20 minutes on one itsy bitsy detail, and even when you’re done, you’re certain it doesn’t look quite right. But then you finally zoom out and look at the whole piece, and it looks fine.
–Reality is unrealistic. You’ll find this one is especially true when using a photograph as a guide.
–Faces and hands are the most expressive part of the human body, which means that the attitude of the picture depends on them, yet they are also the parts of the human body that are the most frustratingly difficult to draw.
–In contrast, breasts are one of the easiest things on the human body to draw. Perhaps that’s the secret reason everybody likes them so much. Or not.

I also learned that drawing is still totally worth it. Anybody who wants to get back into something they gave up out of fear (which, if we’re honest with ourselves, is the reason we give up most things) should check out Cordelia’s blog. That chick is doing what we should all be doing.

So I’m adding drawings to my site. May the powers that be have mercy on me.

The amazing project that is xtranormal has allowed somebody to create this wonderfully bitter, biting criticism of literary academia. It’s something most of us have heard before and know (at least deep down) to be true, but it isn’t only the insightfulness of the message that makes this a great scene.

This is a fantastic example of how good writing doesn’t necessarily have to be realistic. The characters are compelling without behaving the least bit like actual people. The jaded professor is instantly relatable, but even the pea-brained student is somehow endearing in her insistent earnestness (“I will work hard. I want to live a life of the mind”). The blunt-force dialogue somehow holds its own, largely due to the surrealism inherent in these gangly caricatures of the human form and their artificial voices.

So, yes, I love you, humans. You’re so miserable. Let’s not fight.

No, sci-fi has these too.

I can only speak my own thoughts on the matter. A true historical fantasy should depict the contrast and commingling of good and bad. We should see the ugliness of mankind’s deeds and the nobility of human emotions, the savagery of nature as well as its indescribable beauty, set side-by-side. For this is our world.

Neither fantasy nor sci-fi mean anything unless they somehow evoke the reality we live in. And while sci-fi (generally) explores mankind’s relationship to technology and discovery, it’s fantasy’s place to explore our links to our past and to the natural world around us. The best of both these genres also explore our connections to one another. A story without relatable characters leaves us bored pretty darn quick.

And unfortunately, fantasy isn’t willing to step up to the plate the way sci-fi does.

Okay, okay, that was a highly generalized statement. Sci-fi has plenty of cookie-cutter or just plain badly-thought-out premises. But at least most sci-fi is built around an original idea of some kind. Or an idea that’s a pastiche of other people’s original ideas. Or maybe they’ll have the courtesy to come up with an alien race or monster that looks kind of different from other people’s aliens and monsters. Just not motherloving elves and dwarves and wizards again and again and again.

Screw elves. I want a fantasy about humans. I want them to wear burlap and huddle in the dark afraid of predators. Let them dig out the earth with hand tools made of wood, and build their houses and barns and castles with years of toil. I want to see humans loving and talking and betraying one another while they shape what they can of the world around them, even as its unfathomable vastness holds them in awe. That’s what I’d really like to see more of.

Ah, well. Better get back to writing. The only way any of us can experience our perfect stories is to create them ourselves.

I adore Dragon Age. But black Cousland + white parents = fun killer.

As I’ve gotten older and wiser, I’ve begun to realize why it wasn’t the most beloved Star Trek series; despite intermittent flashes of quality, watching Voyager is watching interesting characters and concepts being slowly strangled to death by lazy writing. This makes it frustrating, which is much worse than simply bad. Certain aspects of certain characters are quite engaging, and there are moments when you’re invested in their growth and struggles. Then the show ruins it by taking the easy way out, and you’re left squirming in your chair.

No! Bad Voyager! Bad Voyager!

But I’m not going to go into all the ways that Voyager disappoints me, just one: the character of Kathryn Janeway. The Captain. The most important person on any Star Trek program. The character done the least justice by the writers.

As detractors often (correctly) point out, Janeway suffers from gross inconsistencies from episode to episode. Sometimes she’s a champion of the Prime Directive, whereas other times she throws it out the window as though it were a live grenade. She’ll insist a person has the right to direct their own lives one moment, then force them to do what she wants in the same scene. So just how many Janeways are there?

Well, I have my own thoughts about Kathryn Janeway. I call it the Real Janeway Theory. I believe that Real Janeway is a full, complete, and awesome character, who emerges periodically to knock our socks off. The downside is that we get to see her in brief flashes and glimpses, only to have her snatched away the moment the writers get uncomfortable doing anything creative. The traits that set her apart from the other Star Trek captains are as follows:

1. Real Janeway is sneaky as all getout.

One of my favorite appearances of Real Janeway is in a silly-but-fun two-parter about Nazis, “The Killing Game.” At one point she’s cornered by an enemy, who tells her to run so that he can have fun hunting her down. He believes he’s beaten her, as she’s wounded, alone, and unarmed. And it seems he’s right–instead of standing her ground, she limps away. When out of sight, she sets a trap. She then lures him into it by cowering, whimpering, and acting otherwise pathetic, until the moment she clubs him with a blunt object and steals his gun.

Let’s go over this again. He makes it clear that he considers her to be an animal. Her strategy is to allow (or even encourage) him to believe this, then take advantage of his overconfidence. She has to demean herself in order to do so, and Real Janeway is okay with that. As long as she gets the upper hand eventually, she’ll do whatever she has to. This is a trait unique to her among Star Trek captains.

It's doubtful things would have worked out as well for Captain Dignity.

2. Real Janeway suffers from profound sexual frustration.

A good character needs to have good problems. One of Real Janeway’s most interesting problems is the fact that she’s the only character on the ship who can’t have sex with anyone. Rightly knowing that having relations within the crew would compromise her authority, Real Janeway struggles to suppress her lustful side. What makes this especially difficult is the palpable sexual tension between her and her First Officer, Chakotay, notably in the early seasons (being Voyager, they of course dropped this potentially fascinating issue like a hot rock).

Of all the traits I ascribe to Real Janeway, this is the one that the writers of the show were best able to portray. We outright see her involved in romances with more than one holodeck character, which for her are ultimately hollow and unsatisfying pursuits. The show wasn’t shy about showing us Janeway’s loneliness and stress over her physical needs, which I always appreciated. I didn’t appreciate them jumping the shark with Q, though.

3. Real Janeway responds to threats with batshit insanity.

And here we come down to it. This is the riskiest and most potentially controversial trait of Real Janeway, but it is my personal favorite. Every captain so far has had their own way of dealing with Big Trouble: Kirk swings in on a rope and punches it in the face, Picard falls back on his principles and inherent nobility, Sisko springs one of his ten backup plans. And Real Janeway? Real Janeway flies off the handle.

Push her and Real Janeway will do something so outrageous, so unpredictable, that the sheer lunacy of it overwhelms her foes before they’ve even had time to think. This may seem superficially similar to what Kirk sometimes does, but believe me, it isn’t. Kirk knows what he’s going to do, and then does it. It might be crazy, but it’s his plan. Not Real Janeway. When in desperate straits, she howls into the wind and charges blindly forward like a Viking berserker. Her enemies don’t know what she’s going to do next because she doesn’t even know it herself.

This characteristic of Real Janeway is rarely seen because it is the characteristic that the writers were the most afraid of. The fact that it emerged at all is a testament to its genuineness as a part of her personality. We see it in episodes like “Scientific Method” , “Equinox”, and “Year of Hell”, and these are the episodes I like to watch, because watching Real Janeway in action is too awesome for words. It’s usually frustrating, however, to watch what happens next. As I said, the writers were terrified of this aspect of Janeway, and always made an effort to smooth it over again after every glimpse we got of it. A pity, really.

But can they smooth over all the slashfiction?

So, there you have it, the three identifying attributes of Real Janeway pursuant to my Real Janeway Theory. These are, of course, in addition to the general captainly traits of being incorruptible, brave, and protective of her crew. Those come standard with Star Trek captains. What I’m talking about here are the things that make her different, the things that make her a unique and distinctive character. This is a character that I love. When Real Janeway emerges in an episode, my heart jumps with joy. You’ve just got to catch her quick, because she’s like a goddamned groundhog.

First thing, allow me to make it absolutely clear how much I love and adore the Mass Effect series. The third game isn’t even out yet and I already know that it’s one of the best video game series of all time, bar none. By the way, this is coming from someone who usually gravitates towards fantasy over sci-fi and is way too obsessed with a series of ancient computer games based on Dungeons & Dragons. Space operas are not usually my bread and butter. But Mass Effect is just that good. It resonates with me in emotional places I didn’t even know I had, it has utterly masterful plotting and characters, it’s visually stunning, and it’s even making its creators bushels and bushels of money.

That said, here are three reasons why nobody should ever, ever make movie versions.

1. They Won’t Be Any Good

It’s no secret that video game movies are bad. They just are. We all know it. Somewhere between the fun of watching a hero have adventures, and the fun of guiding an avatar through adventures, is an unfun wasteland of lame where all movies based on video games dwell in misery.

Why, we all are! We're all video game movies, and I am your king.

Many of the problems here are obvious. A person playing a game finds it fun to do certain repetitive tasks, but that same person watching a movie would get bored and frustrated if the film’s hero did the same. I wouldn’t watch an action movie where the hero just hides behind cover and spends their time alternately shooting at people and throwing glowing things at them, but I’ll spend hours doing that myself in Mass Effect. Which is as it should be, because the fun of the game is that you’re doing it.

Time is another stumbling block. A movie is designed to take up about two hours, while a game is designed to take up weeks of real time. No movie could cover the same ground a game does. Bioware games have excellent stories and rich characters, which might seem to make them suited to cinematic adaptation. However, the problem is that they have too much of both for a single movie to handle. Sure, if Hollywood made it they’d probably make it a trilogy, but the game’s already a trilogy, so you’re still stuck trying to stuff dozens of hours’ worth of content into a tiny two-hour thimble. You can, of course, cut out a lot of the game’s filler (Mako, anyone?), but the fact remains that the plot and characters were designed with the intention that they would have plenty of time and space to grow. Movies don’t have that luxury, and trying to shoehorn in a story originally created for a longer-running medium almost always results in a mess.

Case in point.

I just don’t have faith in Hollywood to make a video game adaptation that doesn’t fundamentally misunderstand what people liked about the original franchise. They just don’t get video games, they don’t want to, and as long as the people who make games and the people who make movies exist in two entirely different camps, there won’t be much of a marriage of the mediums.

2. Canon Shepard is a Dumpster-Faced Lunkhead

This reason could technically be part of the first one, but I’ve singled it out as it’s likely the most important. I know Bioware constantly insists that there’s no “canon” Shepard, but that’s bull. We all know that if they make a movie we’re going to end up with this guy, probably played by Christian Bale:

See what I mean? The bald head, the five o’clock shadow, the dead eyes, the neck like a ham haunch? He’s a Space Marine. Invented specifically so that 14-year-old white boys can pour themselves into him and vicariously shoot aliens and touch boobies, he has no personality. He is not my Shepard. He isn’t a lot of people’s Shepards.

It’s not just that I’m upset that there’s no way they’d make a Shepard who resembled my female space warrior of justice, the Shepard who means so much to me. Well, that does really get to me. But it would also bother everyone else who has played the game. Because the beauty of the original game, something lost in film, is the fact that each of us gets the opportunity to make Shepard our own. Every person who has played Mass Effect has played a Shepard who was the true reflection of their inner hero, whether male or female, white or black, subtle or forceful, kind or ruthless. Make Shepard “officially” someone else and you take that away from us. It taints our experience of this story to paint some meathead in the place of the person we chose to represent us.

While I didn’t mean for this to turn into a rant about how much I hate Space Marine protagonists, it does apply here, as movie Shepard would indeed be a dumpster-faced lunkhead. You know they’d do it. They’ve been doing it to everybody lately. But applied to a video game hero who was initially customizable, it would be egregious.

3. It’s Just Not the Right Choice

I don’t count myself among the naysayers who proclaim that no good video game movie will ever exist under any circumstances (although I find myself inching closer to them on a regular basis). I think that there are some video games that could lend themselves well to film interpretation.

A story of deep conflict and tragic loss. --NY Times Film Review

Mass Effect, however, was already created to have a cinematic feel to it. The cut scenes, the dialogue, the way the camera moves during character conversations-–all of it was supposed to invoke a feeling of a seamless story like that of a film. It makes the games great, immersive to play and incredibly fun. It’s also the same thing that makes a movie adaptation pointless. What could a film version hope to bring to a story that was already told with all the style a movie would have, plus the player choice and interactivity a game needs? It could only possibly take away excellence from the story as it was told before.

People are excited about the Bioshock movie, and you know what? That could actually work. From the original game, you have a story that’s simple enough to fit a movie’s running time, but unique enough to hold interest. You have a fantastic world chock-full of iconic imagery and great opportunities for characterization. There are places where a movie could tell you more, where the game left some blank space that a film interpretation could expand on. It’s a good choice.

Not that I’m convinced it will be good. The history of video game movies is a history of failed ideas, whether or not those ideas could have worked in theory. But enough about the Max Payne movie. I really need to get lunch.

Instead, the movie had a formulaic action film plot in which everything creative about the game it was based on was very carefully avoided (Danger: Spoilers Ahead). Max Payne, our rugged everyman hero, is a good cop thrust into a bad situation, trying to root out the corruption that seems to have seeped into every corner of his life. In this, they stuck to parts of the original story. You still have a dangerous psychotropic drug, Valkyr, circling the streets. It’s still connected to the deaths of Max Payne’s wife and child, and is still being circulated for all the wrong reasons after being covertly developed as a super-soldier drug for the military. But the movie only touches on these plot points as though it’s obligated to, rather than have Max Payne slowly discover the pieces one by one as he goes on his journey of revenge. Sure, he shoots a bunch of bad guys, fights an intimidating super-soldier villain, and discovers that his boss and old friend was the one responsible for his family’s death all those years ago. But that’s all there is to it: good man fights bad people. It’s just boring as hell.

It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, but that’s the problem. What bothers me is that anyone watching this film will think that the game has exactly the same theme. It can line up with all the other reasons people think games are an inferior storytelling medium. You can enjoy the story if you have the right mindset, but in the end you’ll just say, “Oh, our hero goes out and shoots everyone who ever wronged him. What a childish fantasy.” And as far as the movie is concerned, that would be correct. Making the bad guys so eeeeeevil that you can then kill them with impunity is indeed a childish fantasy. But without playing the original, a viewer watching the film would have no way of knowing how ironically the game makers portrayed that idea.

In the original Max Payne, you, the player, indeed step into the shoes of a tough-as-nails cop out for revenge. You mow down hordes of faceless thugs, all in the service of discovering the next clue that will lead to the people behind the cover-ups and dirty, dirty corruption. You fill bodies with bullets and you smash faces with baseball bats, and by God you enjoy every minute of it. But the game is made in such a way that, in between each of your raging bloodbaths, you are forced to question your own motives. With every drug-fueled dream sequence and every vanquished enemy pleading for his life, the game drives a little nail further and further into the back of your mind. A voice appears, while you kill and kill and kill, a voice that seems to keep getting louder, always whispering: Maybe you’re not a hero exacting righteous vengeance. Maybe you’re just a psychopath.

Please, Max! No! No, Max, I'm sorry!

Hear your dead wife, begging you to stop doing…something? Hear your crying baby? Who killed your family again? It was those guys, right? Those guys you’re going to shoot and maim and beat to a bloody pulp. Who are they again? Oh, right, they killed your family. At least, you think they did. But they did, right? I’m going to kill those bastards. I’m going to kill them! I’m going to kill all of them!

And that’s video game Max Payne. That would have made for a kick-ass movie. And the one good thing about the Max Payne film was the way they portrayed the effects of Valkyr, so I know they could have done Max’s self-questioning dream sequences to great, maybe even iconic, effect.

But as usual, the chance was squandered. I honestly believe that Hollywood purposely half-asses its video game movies because it has no respect for them and wants video games to stay in the gutter where they belong. They’re okay with making money off their franchises, mind you, but they’ll never put any effort into truly adapting the spirit of a great game into what can be a great film. Instead, we just have Max Payne, another lackluster entry in the hall of shame that is video game movies. Games are never going to drag themselves up at this rate.